Okay, not quite wordless, but I felt an explanation would be polite and helpful.

Wordless Wednesday is just that. Every Wednesday I will simply be posting a picture, image or video and leaving the commentary, the interpretation, and the words up to the viewer. I imagine that with all of the photo snapping and video-mania going on in our home that there will be plenty of varied and interesting things to see.

Speaking of pictures...

Please visit API Speaks to read my newest contribution: A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words.

Here we are at six weeks postpartum and I have seven more days before I am returning to work. I don't feel like someone who is fully recovered and ready to return to my pre-baby life. Who came up with this six weeks thing as the magic number for all things returning to normal? I am fortunate that my job is supportive enough to allow me to work reduced & flexible hours and bring Mathilda to the office while I am at my desk working (I obviously cannot take her with me when I visit families in their homes). I can't imagine an entire day away from her yet; Mathilda is still so tiny and needs me so desperately. Not to mention the fact that, though technically healed, my body is in this limbo between pregnant and non-pregnant--choked full of hormones and churning out a constant supply of food for my baby. Sure, I am no longer medically at risk for infection or hemorrhage...but is that all that matters? Isn't there more to parenting?

Dr Sears comments on the demands of motherhood:

Modern mothers are expected to do it all: keep a perfect house, raise intelligent and creative children, provide their husbands with companionship and sex, and have a stimulating life of their own on the job or elsewhere. A new mother who tries to live up to this image of Supermom is headed for trouble. Learning how to be your baby’s mother is a more-than-full-time job.

Our culture's refusal to properly acknowledge & support this important time in a mothers life may certainly be a culprit in the rise of postpartum depression, abuse and neglect of infants, and the spread of contagious childhood diseases in child care facilities: I have yet to meet a new mother who at six weeks was feeling like her old self again, who was thrilled to return to work , or who loves dropping her newborn off at daycare. But we all silently follow the rules because of of our cultural expectations and the skewed images presented to us by the media. Our society perpetuates the notion that your new baby is the perfect accessory to your old life rather than embracing the truth: a baby completely destroys your old life and out of the ashes rises something more wondrous, tender and beautiful. Mother's should feel stronger about their relationships, their families, their roles as women, sisters and mothers after giving birth and sharing that experience with their family. They should feel more lovely and more fully themselves. Instead, many mothers feel depressed, are ashamed of their real bodies, afraid of the world we are introducing our babies to, envious of others who make motherhood look glamorous, struggling with our marriage or relationship, or feeling competitive with other mothers.

The photo on the right shows a celebrity named Trista. I am not sure who she is, or why she is a celebrated figure (I don't watch TV). Nonetheless, here she appears on the cover of a national publication, showing off how a baby has not really changed her life: I mean-- she has her body back, and what other measure of a woman's life is there?. Hurray! (that was an ironic hurray). I'm not criticizing: she looks healthy and fit. But who among us mere mortals can live up to this image? And not just the physical image, but the emotional one as well? What if you aren't happy and thrilled with your body and your (gasp) baby?

Here is a written account of celebrity postpartum reality:

Patricia Heaton, the Emmy-winning wife of Raymond on "Everybody Loves Raymond," is lifting the veil on TV glamour. Heaton speaks openly about having had plastic surgery, including a tummy tuck and a breast lift.

"There's no way I could look the way I do if I didn't have the surgery," she says bluntly. "There's a way we actresses sort of have to promote ourselves as having it all together and being glamorous, and yet being a perfect mom," she told The Post. "A lot of people out there who look at magazines, pictures and award shows, see all these actresses who have kids and yet they're looking fantastic," Heaton says. "I think people really should know that, if you also had a team of experts working you for three or four hours, and you had been fasting for 10 days before that, and people were lending you $10,000 dresses and $50,000 necklaces, you could look fabulous, too."

Our family is pretty close. And by family, I mean extended family. And by close, I mean that for the most part, with a few west coast exceptions, they all live in this general geographical area. And a bit more specifically, when I say close, I also mean that we have frequent get-togethers and various soirées. And even with all of this frequent contact, I still have to say that I am crazy about my family. They are the some of the best people I know. Even though we don't always see eye-to-eye on everything, they are nonetheless some of the most open minded, truly supportive folks I have ever known. When we told them that we planned on having a homebirth, they didn't bat an eye. At least, there was no eye batting in my presence. If they had doubts about my safety (or sanity) they did what supportive family should do and kept it to themselves while wishing me the best of luck convincingly enough to make me think they were sincere. That is the great thing about being a grown up in a trusting, loving family--they may not like all the choices you make, but by god, they know they raised you well enough to let you make them.

One of my favorite family 'things' is how all of us women-folk get together for brunch on our birthdays. The birthday gal gets to pick her venue and we all show up bearing elaborately wrapped gifts which we have been shopping for all year long with this or that lady in mind. The trick is to stuff a ton of pretty much unrelated stuff into a giant gift bag (or basket, or flower pot, or watering can, etc...) so that the gift opening last for the entire brunch. With the exception of the occasional pregnancy (mine, mostly) we also get a bit tipsy. We all also pretend like we don't want to order the cheesecake for dessert, but we usually do anyway.

"You’ve got to raise your consciousness so that you’re more conscious with your children.”

JulianARTS is thrilled to announce the new blog spot for Attachment Parenting: API Speaks. API's mission is to "capture the real stories of life as an AP family and to highlight the fact that, despite all the varied family structures, cultures, religions, and dynamics that exist in the world, there is one thing that unites us: Our love and compassion for our children." I am honored to be a contributing writer for API Speaks and I hope that you will take the time to visit their site to read all about my attachment parenting highlights, joys, and challenges.

Stay tuned for more exciting things from JulianARTS, including a site re-design, a new weekly column, and continued updates from our family.

Twenty-One days have passed since Mathilda joined us. Twenty-one days of constant nursing. I had a few uncertain moments; should she be eating so often? The inevitable question; am I making enough milk? But then I see how she has outgrown a few of her outfits, the way she can stay alert and awake for longer periods of time, and of course the deluge of wet nappies, and I am pretty sure we are doing just fine. However, in a numbers-obsessed America, there is nothing more reassuring than numbers on a scale. Our midwife came out for a check up and we were delighted to see that our little T-Bird now weighs in at a hefty 9lbs 14oz.

I've also begun pumping & storing breast milk in preparation for my return to work as a home-visiting parent educator. Fortunately, my employer is a progressive organization that supports their breastfeeding employees.

More than 91,000 babies were mistreated in their first year of life in the United States in 2006

A recent study revealed a physiological connection between child abuse and feelings of intense pain

A 14-year-old girl gave birth in a restroom at her junior high...she tried to flush the baby down the toilet

In 1989 when an OB nurse attempted to wrestle my newborn son away from my breast while screeching that I could "only feed him every four hours!" I knew that the way I wanted to parent was the right way for me, but that our society had a long way to go yet. My son and I never did have a perfect nursing relationship; my choice to nurse was questioned often, and eventually I gave in to the pressure and the reported ease of bottle feeding. I regret that there was not more support for both of us and wonder how things might have turned out if I had fought harder to do things the way I wanted to.

Today, I am sharing a letter that I received after Mathilda was born from a friend from college. When I began my journey as a doula, and subsequently as an advocate of family-friendly maternity care, I remember having the feeling that I was healing something inside of myself, and certainly, this factored heavily into my choices. But more important than my emotional well being, was my sincere desire to spare just one person the harm that I had endured from an indifferent maternity care system. I began this website as the basic "here are my services as a doula" page and it has morphed into a blog of sorts, and a place for me to post things that peak my interests, capture my imagination, and irritate the hell out of me. I wasn't aware that I was also providing something very personal to my readers. I always thought that my work as a doula--the real work of supporting and empowering women--had to come from hands-on doula work. Being there for women. Holding their hands. Rubbing their backs. Encouraging them when their faith was waining. Crying with them. Sharing their joy when they meet their baby.

But this letter moved me in so many ways and somehow made me feel more like a doula than I ever have. I feel such joy at hearing that a smart, beautiful, talented girl like my friend, Val, is going to put so much thought into having babies--how lucky for that baby! I felt such pride at knowing that I may have even a small part to play in her future commitment to empowered parenthood. No matter what choices she does make, I know that there will be a happy momma and a happy baby at the end of her journey.

Use the Read More Link to continue

From now on, whenever I hear the inevitable question "What if something goes wrong at your homebirth?" I will simply retort with "At least my baby and I won't get MRSA at home!" It just seems absurd to go to a hospital and expose your healthy body...or your healthy baby...to this kind of bacteria unless you were in an complete emergency situation! It is time for Americans to stop relying so heavily on commercialized medicine for everything. Take a first aid course, learn to treat minor emergencies on your own. Educate yourself so that you can take your regular, everyday, routine health care into your own hands. This is scary stuff, folks. As an anthropologists, I can tell you with certainty that overuse of antibiotics is the culprit here. It's called evolution and the germs are winning the award for "fittest." When is the last time you allowed a minor illness to simply take it's course? Try treating your body with love and respect everyday and perhaps it will reward you with relatively good health. Read the entire article on MRSA by clicking the Read More link...